Alpha Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 1) Arthur Stone (hardest books to read .txt) 📖

Their owner himself was sitting at a massive table. A whole ballet troupe could dance atop it, and it would barely shudder when they leaped. Ash, leader of the trading post, was eating dinner. Before him was a dish featuring some sort of large, roasted bird. It was no domesticated duck or chicken, but obviously some sort of game bird. I hadn’t seen one like that before, either. As he chewed the last slice and used a big knife to cut off the next, Ash spoke out of half of his mouth. “Well, tell me how.”

“How what?”

The man raised his eyes and locked them with mine. His voice was tired. “How you slept. How you ate. How you shit, and how you picked your nose on the way out. But most importantly: tell me about the garpikes. I wish to know everything about them that you do.”

“Well, they live in the river,” I hedged.

Ash, picked up a piece of roasted skin with the tip of his knife and nimbly tossed it into his mouth, nodding approvingly as he mumbled, “Observant lad. Keep going.”

“They’re predators, like the kotes. However, they’re less numerous, and they never stay in a single spot for long. I’ve only seen them in the fastest part of the stream, chasing the current. Each school has only a few fish. We parked our raft next to the current, and I caught three of them.”

“With what?”

“I have a special fishing rod, and a talent that helps me catch fish with it.”

“What other talents do you have?”

I shook my head. “Paragraph two of my employment agreement stipulates that a freelance employee has the right not to disclose work or combat talents, attributes, and other ORDER parameters.”

Ash looked up from the meat, his jaw pausing its chewing. “What?”

“Paragraph two of the employment agreement. I can cite it in more detail, if you’d like.”

“Who told you that nonsense?”

“It’s written on the paper hanging on the inside of the door at the inn.”

“Ah, right. Literate. I forgot. So you have talents which allow you to catch garpikes. Where did you learn these talents?”

“At home.”

“Where is that?”

“South of here.”

“Praise the gods, boy, I thought you came from up north. You know, every moron knows that it’s easier to find an honest girl in a southern port brothel than it is to find a garpike in the river. Lying is an acquired skill, Ged. You have your tricks, yes, but not the experience and nerve necessary to live here. But that’s your business. I don’t even care if you’re an imperial, or a fugitive. I don’t care if the demons themselves taught you how to fish. But the fish themselves—that, I do care about. As the only authorized emissary of the Three Sevens in the lands of the Pentagon, I am in charge of all collection of spices, ores, and minerals. None of it is to escape my notice. Everything must go to the Treasury of the Three Sevens, in exchange for compensation. Representatives of the Treasury exist not only at the Stone but also in all trading posts, and in some villages.”

“I turned all three of them in,” I protested. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, Ged. But I’m sure you’ve heard that catching garpikes is a rare event.”

“I heard that mentioned here and there.”

“I would understand if you just caught one. Anyone can get lucky. Even a boy like you. Two? Well, perhaps that could happen, as well. Sometimes, a person does get very lucky indeed. But three? That’s not luck. You do in fact have talents which allow you to catch garpikes. Do you know how many we caught last year?”

“Twenty?”

“Twenty-four. They were a little bigger than yours, perhaps—but twenty-four is still only twenty-four. That was during the entirety of garpike season, which is three weeks long. During that time, they migrate up the river, every year. When they come back down, their caviar sacs are empty. During those three weeks, we caught a measly twenty-four of them. And here, you caught three in a day, two and a half months before garpike season even begins. It is my job to understand people. Which things about them are useful, and which things are dangerous. You are hard to read, Ged. You seemed to have potential, but a dubious potential. Those were the thoughts I had about you the day that the wagon arrived. Now, though, my thoughts have changed. You are useful. Very useful. We need workers just like you. Will you be able to catch more?”

I shrugged. “Fish are unpredictable creatures. I may not see any tomorrow. Or, perhaps they will learn to avoid the method I use to catch them.”

“Do whatever you can to get more garpikes. We need them immensely: they drop a very rare kind of spices. The very spices for which we continue to defend the Stone. The guild’s management expected excellent produce from us, but we have had three difficult years, one after the other. Bad luck with the weather. Bad luck with disease. Bad luck with everything. Our incoming supplies have been cut, and now we have fewer workers. Most of the good guards are gone—I don’t even have anyone capable of keeping the local rabble away from the hornflower fields. This whole hornflower season has been lost. We must find our produce somewhere else. Garpikes are a good solution. They drop very rare spices. Some recipes require their caviar, with no alternatives available. Their bile is not only a spice but also a valuable alchemical ingredient. Not as valuable, of course, but still worth something. However, twenty-four garpikes is nothing special. That doesn’t even merit a mention in my report to the guild board each year. Two hundred garpikes, though? That would be something. We have the whole summer ahead. Nearly three months. If you catch